(5)Crash Bandicoot vs (12)Cecil Harvey 2018
Ulti's Analysis Cecil. Harvey. Never. Wins. GFNW (Gordon Freeman Never Wins) was one of the original contest memes, and it was so well known that even CJayC was joking about it and trying to feed Gordon easy competition to get a win. Well Cecil actually has it worse. He shined in this match for about 3 minutes, and then Crash just swamped him. This match was never close after the 3 minute mark, and would quickly become the latest example in a long line of Cecil Harvey flops in contest lore. If this was going on during the early days, this would be a legendary contest history. https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/2078-dream-division-round-1-kirby-vs-cecil https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3244-division-1-round-1-cecil-jade-wario-zack https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/3739-chaos-division-round-1-cecil-harvey-vs-knuckles https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4519-east-division-round-1-luigi-vs-waluigi-cecil-vs-golbez https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5214-character-battle-ix-division-8-round-1-pit-vs-wrex-vs-cecil And now the Crash loss. Outside the original Kirby match, Cecil was debated to win all of these. He's come close a lot, but he's never actually won anything. He shocked the world by putting up 48% on Knuckles, but didn't win. He surprised everyone with how close he got to Luigi, but still. He lost. He was supposed to win the 3way match with Pit and Wrex. He lost. And then Crash happens. We all like Crash, but in his extensive contest history, he had two wins before this match. 2002 against Ulala (who?) and 2013 in a 3way against Wheatley and some trash from Grand Theft Auto. He's lost every other match. And the guy went out there and beat the tar out of a well known Final Fantasy character, in another match Cecil was supposed to win. The logic was "hey there's no way Crash is stronger than Knuckles, right?". Turns out things change from year to year and your holy extrapolated standings are garbage. Again. Using the LOL x stats is about as smart as picking sports based on who won last year. They mean nothing. The especially funny thing here is it's well known Final Fantasy 4 is Allen's favorite game. He's been blatantly putting Cecil in matches where he has a shot to win, and Cecil keeps losing anyway. This is the steroid version of what Ceej was doing with Gordon Freeman, and we're not far off from Allen just blatantly disregarding normal seeding and putting 2 seed Cecil against 15 seed Cayde-6 or something. And I frankly wouldn't blame the guy. This is embarrassing to watch if you're an FF4 fan. Lightning Strikes' Analysis What happened?: In the "Final Fantasy lead loses in a debated match they were the board favourite in" Trilogy, part 4/3, Cecil Harvey Never Wins (CHNW) officially became a thing. With five straight losses he has officially beaten Gordon's record. This match also cements the strength of 90's mascots and the weakness of Final Fantasy. Five years ago this match would have had the same result or worse going the other way around. Cecil always loses but he's not weak, he has come close a few times. This was his to lose. But Crash has boosted just like Spyro did thanks to his rerelease, and Final Fantasylooking generally poor. Once again this started close as board 8 tried to bracket vote their way to victory, but then Crash started to build his lead and it was never in question. What could this mean?: There's not much to say really, Crash has gone from fodder to a reasonable midcarder and CHNW. This result was foreshadowed nicely by Spyro vs. Chun-Li and Zidane vs. Knuckles. I actually originally had Crash in my bracket, before you absolute arseholes (joking, joking) convinced me to change it to Cecil, then those two matches happened and I was like "Oh". This match didn't tell us much new, but it did give further confirmation of a few trends. I also wonder if there's been a Sony boost. Crash owes a lot of his strength to the PS4, as does Kratos and arguably Spyro. Lastly, the casuals continue to beat us - I think the only match the B8 favourite beat the casual favourite on is Sully vs. Aya. Oops. Safer777's Analysis This match was sad. I didn't know when the match happened but Cecil is one of the few people that have taken part in 5 contests and hasn't a single victory! As for Crash he was a PS 1 icon. The Sony mascot back then! Then he fell from grace. But last year some Crash games were re-released updated of course and they did really good in sales. The Crash Trilogy was in 1st place on sales on UK at least! Guess people really want Crash? Nostalgia? Anyways at least an icon won. But man yet ANOTHER FF protagonist fell on the 1st round! Also the Casuals beat us easily here. 60% of the Gurus had Cecil win! Man we make mistakes too you know! Tsunami's Analysis Cecil Harvey Never Wins became the new meme here, because he's frequently had winnable matches and he's just never managed to pull it off. But it's not quite like Gordon Freeman where he's losing to obvious fodder; the only truly questionable one, except maybe this one, was losing to Wrex in 2013 (when we still weren't sure if he'd win, but it was Pit that we thought he'd lose to). FFIV as a whole is 0 for Character Battles, but I don't think Cecil represents its best chance to break that trend. Even in obvious losses (e.g. his debut in 2005, against Kirby, though Kirby was still flying under the radar then), he underperforms. Rydia's two matches have been obvious losses and she's performed well in them. Her first contest was 2008 and she was in the same fourpack as Auron, but despite being SFF'd, she still came in third place, beating out a character who'd made Round 3 the previous year against legitimate competition. Well, against Ocelot and Kefka, at any rate. Kefka actually advanced to that Round 2 match in second place behind Marcus Fenix. He lost to Marcus twice in 2007, and the very next year Marcus can't even beat Rydia with Auron in the poll. That's either the biggest single-year dropoff, the biggest LOLKefka, or Rydia has potential. Probably a combination of all three. Female characters were boosting all over the place this year. Imagine what Rydia could do with an After Years pic. She probably wouldn't even sacrifice recognizability, and she'd have a tough TJF to take out. Of course, given how most of our nomination rallies this year fared in bracket placement, if we tried getting her a Returners Nomination Rally we'd probably see (6)Tifa Lockhart vs (11)Rydia. Still, I think it's worth a shot. Also the casuals didn't find this all that debatable. Over 73% got it right. The Gurus didn't even break 40% correct on this. LOL us. Category:2018 Contest Matches